History of Electric Field Therapy

The earliest references to the use of electricity in medicine was the use of the Mediterranean torpedo fish, a variety of electric ray. Aristotle and the historian Pliny both referred to the effect of this fish. Scironius Largus described it application for the treatment of gout. Dioscorides, the famous physician who founded the Western Materia Medica, Galen, and Paul of Aegina advised treatment by electric shock from this fish for the treatment of headache.

In 1650, von Guericke built an electrostatic machine containing a sulfur ball rubbed by hand. The first recorded observation of the use of electricity specifically for medical purposes in Europe was attributed to Kratzenstein, professor of medicine at Halle. Jallabert, professor of physics at Geneva, is said to have been the first electrotherapist, for in 1747 he effected some improvement in a locksmith's arm that had been paralyzed for 15 years.

Another scientist that did research on electricity as a therapy was a Russian emigrant, Georges Lakhovsky who made observations of the effects of electricity and radio waves on living organisms. His first book, THE SECRET OF LIFE, was first published in 1935 during the same month Hitler drove his hordes into Prague. The book appeared later in Spanish, French, Italian, and finally in English.

Many of his theories were, of course, ignored in conventional medicine as in 1938, the Flexner Committee reported to the US Congress it report on medical education and branded electrotherapy as "quackery." Many of Lakhovsky's theories were only recently confirmed by Becker in his book THE BODY ELECTRIC, published in 1987.

Today, electric field therapy is slowly gaining acceptance among the  medical fraternity as an effective method to treat various ailments and diseases.